I woulda splurged on the Metabolic Drive but it takes a while to ship to Canada and this was a last-minute decision. Oh wells.

Anyhow, the general breakdown of how I’m doing this is:

Training day:

• Normal meals:
  • 1-2 shakes of (1 scoop protein blend, pinch cocoa, 1 omega3 cap, 1 tbsp milled flax)
  • 1 shake of (1 scoop protein blend, pinch cocoa, 1 omega3 cap, 1 tbsp psyllium)
  • 1 shake of (1 scoop protein blend, pinch cocoa, 1 omega3 cap, 1-2 tbsp natural peanut butter)
• “Workout” shakes: 2 shakes of (1 scoop whey protein, 5ml creatine, 20g dextrose). One of these is chugged ~30 minutes before the workout, the other one is sipped during and then finished after the workout.

Non-training day:
Just like training day, except subtract the training shakes and add one more “normal meal” shake.

Very exciting stuff.

I’ve decided to take “before” pics first thing tomorrow morning. I think it’s sort of misleading to take photos right on day 1, although in this case it probably won’t matter much because it’s not like I was eating Twinkies and Pop-Tarts before I started this.

Right now I’m predicting that a mere 1 week of this isn’t really going to do much, except to give me a taste of how it feels to follow an utterly stupid diet instead of just a mildly stupid one. Also, this week is sort of hella busy for me, and the time I save cooking is going to be handy

In terms of training, I’m cutting my HIIT and following the same training plan that Gus Pacho did on his V-diet in the T-nation physique clinic. (I actually started following it last week, after I finished a 6-week squat-spec cycle.) I did my first official v-diet workout today on a free pass at Xtreme fitness on the Danforth — which wasn’t the nightmare that all the online reviews made it out to be — and I felt pretty awesome. I forgot how rupturing dextrose-fueled workouts could be.

For NEPA (non-exercise physical activity), I’m going to stop cycling to work and instead walk to and from there every day, which is about 10km of walking in total, more or less. (I don’t want to bike because (a) I’m pretty used to it at this point, and (b) some parts of my cycling route can occasionally be a little tough and I don’t want to boink halfway through my ride. Plus, it’s fun to change things up once in a while.) I did the walk on Friday morning and it’s a beautiful one. I like the view of the city as I walk south on Broadview, and I get this undefinable feeling when I see the workers in Chinatown East lining up at the bakeries for breakfast before they start their shifts at the food markets around there.

But I digress. Like I said, I’ll stop in to talk about this from time to time if I feel that I have something of note to say, but I don’t think that’ll happen much.

Here goes.

1. 0.75 scoop whey + 30g dextrose + 5g creatine (Split between pre & post workout)
2. 1 cup cottage cheese + 1tbsp flax + celery
3. 0.75 scoop whey + 1 tbsp psyllium
4. 75g white or red meat (weighed cooked) + steamed broccoli
5. 75g white or red meat + steamed broccoli
6. 75g white or red meat + cucumbers + flax

Of course there are minor transgressions — adding 1 teaspoon of olive oil to some broccoli here and there, and eating an extra spoonful of cottage cheese or something — but not much beyond that. No cheat days, they don’t really work for me. On a couple of days I’ve let myself have a handful of nuts or a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter, or just more protein. (Right now I’m getting around 0.8g/lb of bodyweight. I find that fat loss halts for me if I go 1g/lb or higher, as is usually suggested.)

Anyhow, I was getting bored of eating the same things over and over again, which was when the idea to do a mini- Velocity Diet occurred to me. In a nutshell, the V-diet is just drinking 5-6 shakes a day (w/ milled flax or other minor additives) for 28 days. It’s for hella fat people, mostly. I figured I’d just try it for a week. When I got a brief, funny scared feeling in my stomach at the thought of it, I knew I was going to have to try it. I mean, is fear not just a physiological “good idea!” signal to the mind?

Now, I’ve read about the v-diet quite a few times, and quite frankly I think it’s stupid. I think it’s stupid for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I like to eat _real_ food, not some weirdo chemical stuff that comes out of a plastic tub. But then again, so does the author of the v-diet!

But for a whole breed of people who’ve never set dietary limits on themselves, I can see why it works.

Anyhow, I’m not about to start philosophizing about this. Michael has no time for trivialities like ‘doubt’ and ‘reflection’. It seems like a fun way to end this 4-week stint, so I’m going to give it a shot. 7 days is nothing, really.

Since everyone who does the v-diet seems to feel the need to post their progress online, I figure I’ll play along. So, starting Monday, I’ll have a 7-day log of how things go.

It’s gonna be awesome.

We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.

– Edward Gibbon

Hesiod, the Greek historian, noted, “Observe due measure, moderation is best in all things.” Yeah, but what could Hesiod bench press? Plato, noted for underperforming in the squat, said, “We should pursue and practice moderation.”

– Dan John

“If you always put limits on yourself and the things you can do, physical or anything, you might as well be dead. It will spread into your work, your morality, your entire being. There are no limits, only plateaus. But then you must not stay there. You must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.”

– Bruce Lee

Inspirational? Well, I find them to be so. But of course, those aren’t reasonably what is going through my mind when I’m about to duck under a heavy-ass weight. Usually, it’s closer to something like:

WHAT A SPLENDID PIE! PIZZA PIZZA PIE!

– Serj Tankian

I mean, who really ever waxes existential before 7am? (And hell, Tankian is downright eloquent when shoved up against, say, Tom Araya. They both get the blood up, though.)

Education of a Bodybuilder is split into two parts, with the first ostensibly being an autobiography and the second about how to train. However, the first part of the book is really about Arnold’s ability to focus on something with such intensity and confidence that it almost inevitably comes to be. This is the meat of the book, in my opinion, and is incredibly inspiring. I’d recommend it to anyone who has a goal or two collecting dust somewhere and needs a swift kick in the turbine to get them on track.

There are some great pithy lines in there for you to throw at your friends — or in your Facebook quotes page, as you like it. (Sigh.)

Arnold on Austria:

There seemed never to be enough space. Even people’s ideas were small. There was too much contentment, too much acceptance of things as they’d always been. It was beautiful; it was a great place to be old in.

And on discipline:

Every day I hear someone say, “I’m too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can’t. I never seem to improve.” I’d hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak. I can lose ten to forty pounds rapidly, easily, painlessly, by simply setting my mind to it. By observing the principles of strict discipline that bodybuilding taught me, I can prepare myself for anything. I have developed such absolute control over my body that I can decide what body weight I want for any particular time and take myself up or down to meet it.

It was at this juncture that a friend of mine lent me Body for Life, by Bill Phillips. I wrote off the book as mere propaganda for Myoplex (Phillips is the founder of the company), but I have found in the past that such propaganda can be very inspiring in its simplicity, and so I took a couple of hours and plowed through the salient parts.

The training methodologies and diet suggested are nothing new. What Phillips has basically done is stripped bodybuilding down to its barest basics and couched it in terms and conditions that a person new to the discipline can easily understand and adhere to.

The most important thing that I got out of this book was the desire to write down my short term goals. My strategy was to determine my vision and the behaviours that would get me there, and strip them down until I could fit them on a single index card. I made two copies of the card, and I now try to read them before every workout and most meals. This has made a huge difference in how I make decisions about my diet and my behaviour, and has helped me crank up the intensity of my workouts. I’m confident that I can reach my goal by the end of August.

One of my favorite quotes of all time has come out of an interview in this book. I can’t remember exactly who said it, but I know he had an MD, and he was discussing his knowledge of nutrition and training techniques and such, and how he had all this knowhow but wasn’t putting it to use. His exact quote was that “Knowledge is a weak effector of change.” He is exactly right: For years I’ve watched myself partake in behaviours that I knew were self-destructive, always finding some way to justify them with the facts that I’d picked up here and there. Ultimately, you don’t need to know much to succeed at most things. You just need to focus on the parts that are important and to do them well.

This is definitely worth a read for anyone who seems to be doing everything right but isn’t making much progress in their training. It’s the best two hours I’ve spent doing anything in the past little while.

—
Postscript: I just looked up the most recent edition of this book on amazon.com. Dear god, what were they thinking when they put that photograph of Bill on the cover? He looks like a pedophilic mannequin.